Install CentOS on WSL- Windows 10 subsystem for Linux

Learn a simple way to manually install CentOS on Windows 10 Subsystem for Linux in order to run RHEL’s RPM or YUM repository commands…

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Windows Subsystem for Linux is a state-of-art feature for users. Since it lets you practise and learn Linux operating system commands directly on Windows 10 system without any usage of virtual machines software like VirtualBox. Windows Subsystem for Linux which is also called as WSL, in short, a layer implemented by Microsoft in Windows 10 and Windows Server 2019 operating systems for providing compatibility and execution of Linux binary executables natively.

To install a Linux Distro image generally we depend on Microsoft store, where a couple of pre-compiled lightweight images are present. Currently, available Linux WSL images are Ubuntu, Kali Linux, Debian, AlpinLinux, OpenSUSE and SUSE Enterprise Server. Thus, if you want to try some Linux OS such as CentOS/RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise) and Arch Linux then we have to manually install them on Windows 10 Subsystem for Linux. Here we will show how to do that?

How to install CentOS 7 on Windows subsystem for Linux

Note: Before installing CentOS on WSL, you must have enabled Windows subsystem for Linux. If you don’t know how to do that then read this: Enable WSL on Windows 10

1: Download CentOS WSL

The first thing we need a CentOS on WSL (Windows 10 FCU or later) based on WSldl. Basically, it is a zipped file that contains rootfs and other files. The CentOS as a WSL Instance is an open-source project available on Github, so get it from here. The latest version CentOS it offers is CentOS 7.6.

2: Unzip WSL CentOS 7.x zipped folder

The size of the downloaded folder would be around 300MB and after downloading right click and unzip the folder. Here we are using WinRAR to extract the files, however, you can use Windows default or any other program to unzip it.

3: Run CentOS.exe to install it on Windows 10 subsystem for Linux

After extracting the folder, inside it you will see two files one is rootfs.tar.gz and second one is CentOS.exe. We need to run CentOS.exe in order to extract the files and registering them on WSL. Rightclick and run as Administrator.

4: Installation complete

Once the installation is complete, you will get a message for that on the CentOS command screen. Now press Enter key to exit the setup.

5: Run CentOS 7 on WSL

To run it, again go to the extracted folder of the centos for WSL and this time you will see four files. Out of them again right-click on Centos.exe and run as administrator.

Finally, our manually installed Linux subsystem for CentOS is here.

6: Command to update Centos on WSL

You can run any command which would like to execute on CentOS, however, just for checking whether it is working fine or not we are running CentOS update command using YUM.

yum -y update

7: Uninstall CentOS 7 WSL

To uninstall it just use the below single command:

./CentOS.exe clean

Some other information to combat, if you get any error while running it.

If in future you have accidentally deleted CentOS WSL folder and want to reinstall it then first we need to clean the existing installation.

For that first of all again extract the files from the CentOS zipped folder that we have downloaded above and then run Windows 10 PowerShell an administrator, navigate to the extracted folder and again run the below command:

./CentOS.exe clean

To reinstall again run the same CentOS.exe present in the same extracted to register files to WSL- Windows 10 subsystem for Linux.

He’s always been passionate about technology and writing on the subject since 2014. He has a keen interest in all kinds of technologies, from consumer-tech to enterprise solutions. You can contact the author at-- raj@how2shout.com

How can i install apache, PHP AND MYSQL on this WSL system ? I had already installed PHP and composer natively on Windows 10, but I believe the WSL will not see those and would need its own php installation ?

I let Windows Defender scan the two files which are included in the zip. Windows Defender thinks that it found the Trojan Win64/Longage in the files usr/bin/dbus-daemon and usr/bin/systemctl. I won’t install until I know that this is a false positive.

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